Disapproval

The school day came to a close. All of us loaded onto the bus to head home. Ekko and I decided that once we hit our bus stop that we’d walk home together.

It wasn’t typical to walk home with two people, but it wasn’t unheard of for colleges to travel around together. I had my sister to my left, and Ekko on the right. Since I was leading, I tried to set a good pace.

Accounting for the constant shifts in speed to try and match Ekko’s walking was odd. She had a habit of slowing down and looking at her surroundings all too often, which made it very hard to learn her patterns of movement.

On the other hand, my sister and I were so in sync that when one had to slow down, the other already knew to do it too.

“Ekko, how should we approach the project?” I asked, trying to carry her attention toward me instead of blank walls and lamp posts.

“Oh…that’s a good question.” Ekko nervously put a finger to her chin. “Seeing as we have to write on Romeo and Juliet, I figure it would be best to discuss what lead the two to commit suicide in the end.”

“Love,” I answered. “This is going to be a short paper.”

She flashed me a disapproving glare.

“No. I mean, we can go more in-depth on the physiological aspects. Love doesn’t simply cause death. There would have been more factors the lead to it.”

My little sister had a few words on that. “Love is a social construct our ancestors created in order to justify their overly erotic behavior. Darwinism proves that humans mate with the most optimal specimen available, or risk poor childbearing.”

I figured my sister would be at that stage of schooling where they taught her how humans have to pick the best mate to reproduce with. Thankfully for us, the government pairs people based on genetics, so we didn’t even need to do the work of finding someone.

“Y…Yeah…I know that.” Ekko sighed with an even more disapproving gaze. “But regardless of our current understanding of the world, wouldn’t it be more efficient to understand what the people were like back then, and judge them based on those understandings?”

“That sounds like you’ve forgotten to take your pills,” I joked.

“Huh!?” She panicked, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small tin box. “No, no…I’ve taken them. Look! I keep them right here. See? That way I won’t forget.”

“It was just a joke,” I said. Of course she was taking her pills. We couldn’t be speaking otherwise. Her behavior was odd…but nothing like I expected from a pill dodger. An example of that was the barbarian from this morning. “If that’s your idea, it’ll be shot down quick. The teachers may assume you’re a delinquent for those kinds of ideas.”

Disappointment on her face grew more sloth by the second. I’d never seen someone so sad before over a thing as minor as this.

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone sad since my sister was a baby.

At this point we were passing by my house. My sister ran up to the door and went inside.

“Shall I walk you home?” I asked, thinking we could continue the conversation.

“Y…yes,” she nodded, fists up with a determined look. “But I…I have to use the restroom!”

That was all she said. We just stared at each other for an awkward moment.

“Then, go.”

“Right here?!” she panicked. “No!”

“I meant go inside,” I shook my head. “You can use the restroom on the first floor.”

“Oh…” she ran in without hesitation.

Ekko was taking a minute in there, but then she came back out to tell me that the toilet wasn’t working, and that she’d need to use a different restroom.

“I don’t understand. How is it not working?”

“Um…” her foot twisted and turned over the ground. “Just come and see.”

When I got into the bathroom, the toilet was bubbling and shaking like it had come to life. I tried fleshing it, but that didn’t fix anything.

“Hmm…alright. Just use the one upstairs,” I said.

“Thank you!” she raced off up the stairs. I could hear her greet my sister as she passed her by.

It took her a few more minutes, but after a few strange crashing sounds, she finally came out.

“Thank you again,” she swabbed the sweat from her forehead.

“Did…everything go well?”

“Yep. I think everything should turn out fine,” she smiled.

“What were those crashing sounds?” I asked.

“Um…” she tried her best to hold a smile. “Nothing. It was nothing. I just dropped something, that’s all.”

Something about that made me a little suspicious, but with how she’d been acting, it was pretty in line with what I expected. I wrote it off as it just being her phone.

***

I walked Ekko the rest of the way home. She claimed she’d get right to work on writing the paper and share the document with me later. I’m not sure how she was going to do that, since we didn’t have any sources yet, but her determination inspired me a bit.

The rest of the night for me was spent gathering sources from government sanctioned websites. Of course, the list was small, but we had to cite something or the teachers would accuse of plagiarism. Hopefully Ekko keeps that in mind.